I. John’s Story

A group of pictures
illustrating how the wooing was done and how
the Lover was received.

IV. Closer Wooing

An evening with opening
hearts: the story of a supper and a walk in
the moonlight and the
shadows.

V. The Greatest Wooing

A night and a day with
hardening hearts: the story of tender
passion and of a terrible
tragedy.

VI. An Appointed Tryst Unexpectedly Kept

A day of startling joyous
surprises.

VII. Another Tryst

A story of fishing,
of guests at breakfast, and of a walk and talk
by the edge of blue
Galilee.

I

John’s Story

“I fled Him, down the
nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down
the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine
ways
Of my own mind;
and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under
running laughter.
Up
vistaed hopes, I sped;
And
shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed
fears,
From those strong
Feet that followed, followed after.”

—­Francis Thompson,
in “The Hound of Heaven.”

“These are written that ye may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing
ye may have life in his name.”—­John
xx. 31.

I

John’s Story

The Heart-strings of God.

There’s a tense tugging at the heart of God.
The heart-strings of God are tight, as tight as tight
can be. For there’s a tender heart that’s
easily tugged at one end, and an insistent tugging
at the other. The tugging never ceases.
The strings never slack. They give no signs of
easing or getting loose.

It’s the tug of man’s sore need at the
down-end, the man-end, of the strings. And it’s
the sore tug of grief over the way things are going
on down here with men, at the other end, the up-end,
the heart-end, of the strings. It’s the
tense pull-up of a love that grows stronger with the
growth of man’s misunderstanding.

But the heart-strings never snap. The heart itself
breaks under the tension of love and grief, grieved
and grieving love. But the strings only strengthen
and tighten under the strain of use.

Those heart-strings are a bit of the heart they’re
tied to, an inner bit, aye the innermost bit, the
inner heart of the heart. They are the bit pulled,
and pulled more, and pulled harder, till the strings
grew. Man was born in the warm heart of God.
Was there ever such a womb! Was there ever such
another borning, homing place!